Pondering Beading Illustrations

I've long prided myself on the number and quality of the illustrations in my beading patterns for as long as I've been writing them. I was fortunate to have picked up a few skills in Adobe Illustrator from my time in graduate school, so when I first started writing beading patterns, I used this software to make my illustrations look as close to the finished beadwork as possible. Here's one that I made of the Double Bubble Jacks beaded bead:

Except for the color differences, I think it's a pretty good representation of the real thing:
The problem is that this kind of illustration isn't as helpful for teaching how to weave this design. There's no space in between the beads to show the thread path, and most of the seed beads are hidden behind the larger drop beads.

To remedy this problem, last year I switched to a more open style of illustrating that shows the thread in between each bead. But I still liked my illustrations to look like the finished beadwork, so I didn't use dotted lines through the beads or very much shading of the background beads. Instead, I used labels: letters for newly-added beads during a step, and numbers for beads passed through during a step. Here's an example:
But now I'm thinking of making changes again. While the text that accompanies this illustration lists the beads that are added and those that are passed through during this step, many of my students are visual learners who would rather just follow a nice, clear illustration and avoid reading through the text as much as possible (I must admit that I'm partial to this method too).

So I'm thinking of ditching the labels, shading beads that were already added in a previous step, and adding dotted lines through the beads to show the thread path. This method is more in line with the illustrating conventions of the major beading magazines too. Here's the same step as illustrated above, but in the style I'm considering:
What do you think? Which one is easier to follow?